Another PP $1/2 hand - KK against 4 flush....

[sucka]

Same $1/2 session from my earlier post but went digging and found this hand...

I'm in the cutoff with red Kings.

2 limpers to me and I raise - BB and both limpers call.

*** FLOP *** : [ 5s Ac Kc ]

BB checks to early limper who bets. Everyone calls. I normally would raise here, and quite honestly I'm not sure why I did.

*** TURN *** : [ 5s Ac Kc ] [ 9c ]

Jeesh - with everyone calling someone's on a flush draw and I figure at this point I'm needing to hit my 4 outer to take this one down.

Checked again to early limper who bets and I decide what the hell - let's raise and see if anyone's got the flush.

I get BB to fold, but both limpers call.


*** RIVER *** : [ 5s Ac Kc 9c ] [ Tc ]

I thought I'd been living pretty clean lately - what have I done to deserve this???

First player bets and we both fold.

I guess my only real question(s) on this hand is - how often do you raise the flop here? And what are your thoughts behind raising? I guess my thought process on not raising at the time came down to the fact that I knew I wasn't going to be able to bully anyone out. Clearly though, at the time I'm quite sure I had the best hand and should have raised for value. Like I said, not sure why I didn't bet - my only guess is that I was just getting gunshy after getting beat down for 2 hours in a row. Keep in mind that this was the 4th time I had AA or KK in 3 orbits and all had seen a very similar demise. So, my thought process wasn't as clear as it should have been as I'm not real used to playing online (and this kind of crap was basically why I quit playing online).

Like I mentioned in my other post - I played a 2 hour session (~ 160 hands) and didn't win a single one I played in. I had a dream run of cards - I'll take em every time I play...I log on to PP after taking nearly an 8 month hiatus and this is how they say "Welcome back!" /forums/images/icons/grin.gif

Anyway, interested to hear your thoughts on the hand - flame away...

[JTG51]

I guess my only real question(s) on this hand is - how often do you raise the flop here?

Exactly 100% of the time.

I figure at this point I'm needing to hit my 4 outer to take this one down.

A set always has 10 outs to improve to a full house or better on the turn. In this case, a 5 (3), an A (3), a 9 (3) or a K (1).

I log on to PP after taking nearly an 8 month hiatus and this is how they say "Welcome back!"

If you are one of the players that actually believes in this conspiracy theory crap, I recommend you never play online again. How can you possibly play your best game if you think the game is rigged?

[BB King's]

<font color="red">I guess my only real question(s) on this hand is - how often do you raise the flop here? And what are your thoughts behind raising? I guess my thought process on not raising at the time came down to the fact that I knew I wasn't going to be able to bully anyone out. </font color> I would raise - to charge 'em to draw - if they fold - that's fine too.

I would have called the river - I'm not saying it's the right play.

[bernie]

my thoughts behind raising the flop? youre draw is better than a nut flush draw....which i would also raise here....

"I figure at this point I'm needing to hit my 4 outer to take this one down. "

am i missing something? didnt you flop a seet of Ks? you have a few more than 4 outs...

b

[sucka]

I am not saying there's a consipiracy theory - but it boggles my mind how often really strange things happen when playing online. Tonight was the perfect example - even in hands I wasn't even involved in.

Anyway, I just play online for fun and have no intentions of sticking more than $50-75 to mess around with. I don't know if there's anything weird going on or not but it's sure perplexing to me how in a pretty tight $1/2 game I can get smacked down with the kinds of hands that were getting dealt to me. Maybe it's just really, really bad luck - which is fine, I'd rather get that out of the way before I head to Vegas anyway. /forums/images/icons/grin.gif

I'm not kidding - I had AA-QQ 6 times, AK 5 times, other pocket pairs 7 times and flopped 2 sets. One turned into a full house and I lost to a damn straight flush. I played 160 hands and I didn't win a single show down. That's not right.

[bernie]

the possibility that something weird is happening in online play should be a consideration when playing. no matter which site youre playing....

no regulations and a human factor.....anything is possible. and i dont put it past people in the gambling business...

i also agree that many flops seem too convenient. but i accept it as part of online holdem....

could be just a bad run though....but sometimes ya gotta wonder....

i think anyone who just plays blindly online, thinking everything is hunky dory is fooling themselves. one should be a least a little skeptical when playing online....

a side example....

blackjack online....now ive never played BJ online, and i never will. because the house has a much bigger interest in the game for one....

for number 2....being a cardcounter, i know how casinos look at us....so lets say online someone offers a game of, say, 4 decks....ANYONE can buy a program to count exact cards for playing here. and there isnt a bet spread restriction online is there? there's no risk of getting caught. (yes, i consider using something other than ones mind to count as cheating) if youre caught in a cardroom with a machine, it's jail time and a fine....

so that leaves the online cardrooms to do what to protect their games? you really think theyll offer a str8 up BJ game? even if they only offer 8 or 10 deck (im not sure how they offer the games online...unlimited decks maybe?) theyre not going to let a team come in a bust em....

so with that in mind, couldnt it transfer in a much subtler degree to holdem?

anything's possible

and there's no proving it either way....

b

[Homer]

Almost all online casinos shuffle after every hand in blackjack. The only exception I know of is Intercasino, which gives like 33% pen in a 6 deck game. This can be beaten with a HUGE spread. Also, I believe Gold Club deals a single deck game that is shuffled after every hand, but has such favorable rules (DAS, S17, RSA) that the player has a slight advantage (+.1% or so).

I have played blackjack online in the past when sign-up bonuses were more prevalent. It would be something like: Deposit $100, get a $100 bonus, then playthrough 5 X (D+B) before withdrawal. So you play $5 a hand for 200 hands, which has an EV of $-4 (assuming a HA of .4%). Then you cash out your $96 win. This takes maybe two or three hours to complete.

-- Homer

-- Homer

[davidross]

I can see smooth calling the flop if the person on your immediate right made the bet, trying to keep the others in for another bet with the intention of raising the turn if th eflush doesn't hit, but in the situation you described I think you have to raise 100% of the time. then you might get checked to on the turn and you can decide whether to take the free card.

I think you have 10 outs(not 4) on the turn if you are behind, and you might not be, so in your situation I would just call the turn bet and maybe the river bet if heads up. If there are already two in ahead of you I would fold. Remember your lack of a raise on the flop has made anyone holding an A think they are good.

You were probably destined to lose the hand no matter what, but I think your play of it was inconsistent and lacking in confidence. Don't play if you're going to play scared.

[davidross]

I had a night like you described last night, losing KK 3 times in 10 minutes(twice with an A flop and once against AA), but I've had many nights winning all my big pairs too. My records show nothing unusual in the fall of the cards, and I have been an overall winner online. I play only at Paradise and can't say I've ever seen anything suspicious in the cards. The one time I complained about player collusion, they banned the two players within 6 hours of my complaint.

With the run your on right now I hope you're not flying to Vegas!!!!

[georgejetson]

I raise the flop every single time for the reason you pointed out:

*with everyone calling someone's on a flush draw*

If they're drawing, I make them pay to draw, no matter how big a favorite I am on the flop. I've found that for me it's never a good idea to slowplay (either by waiting to raise or checking a big set) when the next card off the deck could make someone's hand and put me back in second place (or worse). Then I'm drawing...

If the flop had been three-suited, that's a different story. Maybe wait to raise the turn, but even then, in LL games, I don't think waiting to raise is a great play. People hang around for backdoor draws as well, and I just don't like giving free cards unless I flop a complete hand (and then I jam a made str8 if there's a flush draw out). This leads me to my thoughts on online play...

I agree there are more bad beats online, but I think it's only because you're seeing so many more hands an hour. For the same reason there are more opportunities to punish the people who are making the plays that occasionally result in your bad beats. When you play online poker, the bottom line is that you make many more decisions an hour, and in my experience everything pretty much mirrors what happens in B &amp; M cardrooms, just twice as fast. My worst bad-beat stories are all still from real-world casinos. When I lose a pot online, far more often than not I kick myself for making a play I swear I'll do differently next time... and sometimes I go down when someone makes a runner-runner gutshot str8, just like they do at all those $3-$6 tables in Tunica. But when I'm making the right kind of decisions, I make money.

I didn't say any of that to comment on your play in general, because I'm in no position to do so. I just remember making many of the statements you did about online play, but when my friends and I started thinking about it critically, we discovered it was really a perception issue for us. As far as games being rigged, I certainly don't know about that, but I believe that once again, just like live casinos, it's to an online cardroom's benefit to run an honest game. They'll just make more money by keeping people around rather than running them off, since their interest is in the rake rather than the outcome of the games.

One last thing: statistics. I know PP offers them on a per-session basis. Pokerstars is my new favorite cardrom (and no, I don't work for them /forums/images/icons/wink.gif ) and they keep track of your long-term statistics. When I started liking the look of my stats was when I started making money... Hope some of this was useful.

[sucka]

I figure at this point I'm needing to hit my 4 outer to take this one down.

A set always has 10 outs to improve to a full house or better on the turn. In this case, a 5 (3), an A (3), a 9 (3) or a K (1).

I know - I was actually thinking about the other hand where I flopped top 2 pair - not this hand where I have a set.

I was all frazzled out after that session. /forums/images/icons/confused.gif